Once your engines are ignited, you can't stop them from burning - you can only steer left and right. Taking out a stray satellite or asteroid involves flying in at and angle and then turning sharply away at the last moment in order to disintegrate it,

Fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy

It's incredibly straightforward, but also very rewarding - especially when each piece of fried space junk yields valuable scrap pieces, which can be put towards temporary power-ups or better rocket ships.

IAPs explained

You can earn the game's scrap currency simply by playing through the levels. But if you want a boost, you can splash some real cash.

So, 69p / 99c will get you 30,000 pieces - more than enough for a decent new rocket ship and a hefty bunch of power-ups.

You can also pay the same amount to disable ads.

Still, this fly-and-fry system can get a little repetitive after a few levels. The developer works against this by getting creative with the nature of the debris itself.

You'll soon encounter huge space stations that need multiple passes, and explosive barrels that require you to escape before the shockwave takes you out. You can even use the latter to help your out with the former.

You also get deep space satellites that orbit right at the limit of your range - and sometimes outside of it. You can only operate for four seconds outside of each level's orbital limit, requiring a speedy dip in and dip out.

Fast-moving debris, on the other hand, needs a careful approach, as it can either take ages to catch up to or advance on you alarmingly quickly depending on your vector.

Burn out

All of these touches are entertaining enough, but Cosmic Clean-Up is still a little too lightweight for its own good. It remains apparent that you're doing the same thing again and again, and the aforementioned variations can actually make the game duller to play.

Catching up to a fast-moving object or making a dozen passes to take one out simply isn't fun. In fact, it can be outright dull, and every inch the grinding job that the term 'space garbage collector' suggests.

When it works, though Cosmic Clean-Up is simple ephemeral fun - burning brightly for a relatively brief time before sputtering out through repetition.